


whoever stays around

by QuietLittleVoices



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Found Family, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 07:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14828094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietLittleVoices/pseuds/QuietLittleVoices
Summary: Sammy, and his evolving definition of 'family'.





	whoever stays around

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Younger' by Seinabo Sey. 
> 
> I woke up, wrote this, and now I have to leave for class in 20 minutes. 
> 
> Comments & kudos much appreciated, as always! :)

Sammy, Sam to his dad and teachers who think they’re treating him more ‘adult’, is fifteen. Most nights, he eats dinner alone - simple stuff, lots of frozen microwave meals that his mother buys in bulk. It isn’t that his parents don’t love him, he’s pretty sure, they’re just busy. Even when they’re home - usually just one, not both - they eat in near silence sitting on the couch. 

“How was school, Sam?” his dad asks, not taking his eyes off the TV.

Sammy took a second to shovel more food into his mouth, buying himself a few more precious seconds of silence. “Fine.” Immediately, he stood up and walked back to the kitchen. He washed his dishes as quickly as possible and put them back in their places before leaving and trying to make his way to the stairs.

“Good talk,” he hears his dad say, and it’s almost ironic except that Sam Stevens has never had a trace of irony in his whole body.

Sammy escapes to his room and turns the radio on, making sure to keep the volume low enough that it doesn’t travel through the door. Every night, the lays down with his head near the speaker, shuffling through the stations. Late night DJs, shock jocks, talk radio, news - he recognizes the voices of the regular presenters as he shuffles by them, adjusting the dials. 

 

Sammy is twenty-one and he hasn’t talked to his parents in almost three years. The few boxes that held the meager possessions he, Jack, and Lily collectively owned were still sitting unopened in the living room of the apartment they just put the rent down on together.

They didn’t have a table yet, so they ordered pizza and sat on the floor.

Jack got a silly look on his face and held up a slice of pizza between them. “To us!” he announced, thrusting the piece between them, clearly inviting a toast.

Sammy and Lily both obliged him, echoing his sentiment.

“May we find radio fame,” Lily added, a small smile forming on her face.

“Hear, hear!” Sammy laughed.

Lily pushed herself up and went to turn on the radio, the only thing they’d unpacked and set up on a box. She fiddled around with the dials until she found a music station, and then sat back down and grabbed another slice of pizza. 

The music faded into the DJ’s voice as he announced the names of songs that were coming up, and then back into the music. The sun went down and soon they were left with just the bright overhead light illuminating their trio and fending off the night.

 

Sammy, ‘Shotgun’ to colleagues and fans and Jack when he’s teasing, is twenty-seven and he’s living his dream. 

He’s in the home he’s built with Jack and they’ve just finished up the show they do together. They’re side by side in the kitchen, making a late dinner out of a recipe book Jack had picked up last time he was at the library looking for some obscure book that ended up actually only being available on ebook.

Jack makes a noise of surprise and puts his finger to his mouth.

“Do you need a bandaid?” Sammy asks, concerned.

Jack shakes his head and moves his hand to inspect the damage. “Doesn’t look like it’s bleeding, I think I just nicked myself.”

Sammy takes his hand and looks at it himself before placing a kissing on the spot. “All better, now,” he said, smiling in a look he knew was horribly sappy. He looks up to see Jack rolling his eyes and is struck by the moment. Sammy had known, before - there’s a box upstairs in the back of his nightstand that says how much he knew and wanted this. But he is overtaken by the moment when he sees Jack looking at him like that. “Marry me,” he says, and the words are out of his mouth before his brains’ even caught up.

The look on Jack’s face is priceless.

 

Sammy is twenty-eight and he’s adrift in a way he never has been before. Not when he stopped talking to his parents at nineteen, not when he and Jack cut and ran from Lily’s show. 

Lily’s standing on the porch of the house he bought with Jack and Jack is gone. She’s looking at him, and it’s obvious she’s been crying and Lily Wright doesn’t cry, he’s pretty sure in the almost ten years of knowing her he’s never seen her cry, and Jack is  _ gone _ . 

Lily says something and he doesn’t hear it. He feels like he’s thirty feet underwater, got the headache to match, the weight in his limbs and the deafening, rushing silence of the world around him. And then she’s gone, too.

Sammy is alone.

 

Sammy is thirty and he’s -

He isn’t sure how he’s doing. There’s a horrible, gut-wrenching relief that comes with the people he loves  _ knowing _ . Ben, Emily, Troy, the whole town  _ knows _ . He feels sick if he thinks about it too long, and he knows he shouldn’t - he knows it should be uncomplicated relief, like a weight off his shoulders, but it isn’t because them  _ knowing _ comes with them knowing what he isn’t able to live up to. Knowing he’s a failure, a coward, a quitter.

There’s a knock at his door and Sammy goes to let Ben in, not too surprised when Emily follows. He’s seen her once since the incident with Frickard, and knew that she felt awful about it. It wasn’t her fault, though, and Sammy made sure that she knew that. She hadn’t looked convinced.

“Movie night!” Ben announces, taking up the space with this… everything. For as much as Sammy teased Ben about being short (because he was), Ben commanded a room. He was loud, not just in volume but in presence as he forced himself to be heard and to be listened to. 

Sammy let Ben overtake the stagnant air. “What are we watching?” he asked.

“Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift,” Ben announced. He’d come over a few times since the incident, each time bringing action movies - normally those took up less than half of his movie line-up, but lately they had taken over the musical and romance side. Neither of them mentioned it.

“Hey, Sammy,” Emily greeted as she closed the door behind her and Ben went straight to the TV to fiddle with the DVD set up.

He smiled back at her as best he could, but he knew it fell flat. He could barely feel it on his face as it was. “Hey.”

“I brought snacks.” She held up a canvas bag that looked full to bursting and started to pull out bags of chips.

“Oh, thanks. You didn’t have to,” he replies, even though he didn’t really have much to eat in his kitchen. “I’ll grab some bowls.”

When he gets back, Emily’s lined up the bags on the coffee table and Ben pulls Sammy down on the couch between the two of them and hits play. The lights had been off before, because Sammy hadn’t had the energy to really get out of bed or off the couch to turn them on, but now it seemed like it was on purpose, adding to the atmosphere.

 

Sammy is thirty-two and he’s never been happier in his life. Jack - his  _ husband _ , and isn’t that a word? - is next to him, dressed in a smart suit, and they’re surrounding by a surprising amount of King Falls residents at the entrance to Glory Holes.

It had taken a while to convince Reverend Xavier to let them do this, but with all their paperwork in order Sheriff Troy had managed to force his hand.

Sammy took Jack’s hand, in public, surrounded by their friends - their  _ family _ . It wasn’t the most obvious piece of affection they’d shared in front of them in the last few hours but every time Sammy got to publicly claim Jack as his was a revelation.

Ben, Emily, Lily, and Troy rounded out their team, and afterwards when the rest of the guests had gone home, it was just the six of them who went to Rose’s for dinner.

“To Jack and Sammy,” Lily says, holding up a glass. She hadn’t cried, but her eyes were misty as they all toasted.

When Sammy looked at Jack, Jack was looking back at him, and everything he needed was within reaching distance. So he leaned over and kissed Jack, in front of their family, because he could.


End file.
